"Aw man! After all this time, I thought we'd finally get to do something interesting!" complained Shin as the three made their way to school.

The previous day, Hannah decided to finally teach them about Material Natura. With their strengths finally realized, the boys were elated. However—

「"Hell yes! What are we gonna learn? How to create storms? Split the ground? Or, oh even better! How about learning how to make fish jump on our bucket on their own?!"

"The last one won't even help in a battle…" (Diavolo and Yukio)

"Hold up! I never said we'd be doing anything practical. Today, I'll just be explaining Material Natura."

"Huh~~~~?"

"You're joking, right…?" (Diavolo)

"Guess it can't be helped…" (Yukio)

"Don't get your hopes up too much. Unlike the past, I'm glad to see that you guys are getting used to things so fast. So I thought I should take some time to fill you in on everything in advance.

I don't know how much you've heard from other students, but I'm gonna start from the beginning. As you know, Natura is about controlling energy. But it's not just that. It's also about controlling the things that carry the energy. Hence, it's called Material Natura. It's classified into four main types, which are the four states of matter: Solid, Liquid, Gas and Plas--"

But the boys (Shin and Diavolo) just weren't interested at all in verbal explanations.

"OYE, YOU'RE SLEEPING, AGAIN?!"

"Um, I'm listening this time, though," Yukio said raising his hand.

"NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!" she turned around with her arms crossed, "Geez. And I was planning on letting you guys know what type of Material Natura you possess, but I guess I'll just leave you be."

As if the sound of a meal time bell had been rung, the two immediately opened their eyes and sat upright.

Taking a peek behind, "If only you could follow my lectures like Yukio then—" she saw the two staring at her with large eyes.

"That was fast!" "But I think you'll only listen to me if you get to know your power, right?"

"Hm! Hm!" they nod vigorously.

"Then, forget it," she concluded and made her way out.

"Wait! Alright! Alright! We'll listen!"

"No, that's not it. Even if you listened to me, I wouldn't be able to show it to you. I'll need time to prepare the things required, so you'll have to wait till tomorrow."」

And thus the previous day ended.

"Well this time, I guess even I'll agree that she's delaying a bit. What about you, Diavolo?"

"I'll wait. She said she needed time, so I'll take her word for it. Besides, I'll say if we didn't meet her, we might not have even been able to come this far. Although I'd really prefer no more verbal lessons..."

"That's true. Aw man, suddenly I'm so psyched!"

"Just be careful not barge in while she's bathing again."

"Why you….!"

The school day passed as usual with nothing much to be noted. Once everything ended, they were returning through the hallway. However, for some reason, Diavolo was falling behind.

"It's not there!" he exclaimed causing Shin and Yukio to finally look back, "Not there! Not there! Not there!" he panicked and was touching all over himself for clues.

"What's gotten into you?"

"My pendant! I lost it! Maybe I left it in class? You guys go ahead," and he sprinted back without even waiting for a reply.

Once reaching, he rushed in searching in and around his desk, "Now where could I have dropped it, that pendant?" and he continued looking.

"Is it this one?" he was interrupted by a girl's voice from behind.

"Yeah, that's it! Thank—!" he replied and finally noticed the helper, Suzume Shiro.

Diavolo, who didn't expect to be able to get a chance to talk to her alone like this, didn't know what to say next and remained silent.

"The string looks quite old so it wore off. You'd better change it soon," she handed it to him.

"Y-Yeah, thanks."

"I'll be off, then."

As she walked away, Diavolo heard something like an immediate 'oh no!' at the back of his head. He couldn't think properly and was fixated on the feeling he got whenever she was near. He didn't even have to look nor talk to her. It just happened.

The feeling was always faint, very faint, but Diavolo, who was training his Natura, probably grew heightened senses, ever so slowly.

And thus, everyday, he felt that feeling rise to a very minute degree. Unnoticeable if compared to everyday, but sticks out a little if compared to the very first. He knew that if things went on as it was, he might never find out about it. Perhaps, others may just brush the feeling off as unimportant, but Diavolo found it quite odd. Hence, reflexively—

"Um…wanna go together?"

"Why are you so persistent? What's your goal?"

Shot down immediately it seemed.

"What do you mean?"

"I notice that you always stare at me during class. Almost as if you want to know something. Why?"

"Well you see, my home village was attacked a few years ago and…"

"And? You think I'm responsible?" her tone grew unpleasant.

"That's not it. It's just that, I feel like we've met before and I was thinking if I could get familiar with you, I could get answers. I was apparently born in this city too, and I kinda forgot everything."

Suzume remained silent.

"Sorry, you must be thinking I'm spouting nonsense. If you want, I'll back off from now on."

"Hehe, you're odd, but kinda interesting. Diavolo-kun, was it?" she faced him, "Alright, I'll agree on accompanying you…but only if you manage to impress me in the exam. Like I said, I'm not interested in weak guys."

"Eh? Does that mean that—" he succeeded in getting her attention? Yes. But did everybody handle it this way when someone just 'feels something'? Diavolo did not know.

He smirked and "Yeah, I'm good with that."

She giggled and waved him goodbye, leaving the classroom.

"Guess my goal is clear now..."

[Hannah POV]

"Honestly, what's taking him so long?" she was tapping on the dojo floor getting really impatient.

"Well the pendant is pretty small. Could take a while." (Shin)

"I understand that it must be important to him, but we don't have all day, you know! I'm just gonna start out without him. It's up to him how he's gonna deal with it later."

"Oi, Yu. Remember to explain this to Diav later," he whispered.

"Got'cha!"

"However…What are you doing here, Grandpa?!"

"My dear granddaughter's students are finally getting to know their affinities. Oh, how much they have grown! It's obvious I want to see through this!"

"Well, whatever," she sighed, "Okay listen, Material Natura exists in four primary forms, which are the four states of matter, Solid, Liquid, Gas and Plasma. Of course to work on them, you'll need to know which one you're best suited for first. Note that it is still possible to use regular Pure Natura. It's also possible for one to possess more than one Material affinities. With that said, this is the device used to find that out."

On the floor was a peculiar device. A toroidal shaped, probably hollow, rod of about 3 cm in thickness and 40 cm in diameter. On four, equidistant points on the rod, rose four more rods, each having a spherical container at the top, made out of transparent plastic or glass.

Respectively, each container was filled with either sand, some type of liquid, some kind of cloudlike smoke, and finally some electric coils and a bulb. Rather than a container, the last one was probably a plasma ball.

The same four equidistant points were also joined together in a crosslike manner by similar rods. And where the rods intersected, rose a conical pagoda-like structure, with what looked like, a crystal ball, at the very top.

"Alright, I got it. So what do I do to make this work?" Shin cracked his knuckles.

"You simply need to focus some Natura on your hand and place your palm on the crystal. The device then reads it and, you guessed it, shows appropriate effects based on your affinity. Don't be alarmed if the two of you get different effects for the same element. The machine reacts differently to different energies based on various factors, the details to which you don't need, or rather, don't even want to get to right now," Hannah explained as she tried demonstrating it herself.

Once placing her hand enveloped in energy, the clouds (smoke?) all stuck to walls and turned denser, as if anything put inside the container would look like nothing but a blotch of desaturated color. ThIs revealed her Material Natura: Gas, which the boys had already witnessed previously. All other containers experienced no changes.

Nodding, they understood what they had to do. Shin was first. He did exactly as shown and the results came up: the plasma ball activated.

"There you have it." (Hannah)

"Ohhh! So you're a Plasma-type, huh Shin?"

"Hehe! Yeah, seems like it. But there's one thing I don't understand, though. Why is the smoke getting so restless?"

Having that pointed out, they see that the smoke displayed a regular swirling motion.

"I thought so." (Hannah)

"Hey, does this mean that—?"

"Yup, that's right. You can use both Gas and Plasma."

"Uwoh! Isn't that awesome, Shin?!"

"Hell yeah! This is too good!" he high-fived Yukio.

"Remember the race we had on the first day? I wasn't sure about it at first, but the only way you could've caught up to me back then, was if you used the wind to boost your speed. Since I was using it back then, you—"

"Wait, you were using Material Natura back then?!"

"Yeah, so what? You caught up, anyway. And we ended in a draw."

"That was cheating! I want a rematch!"

"Oh? I'm pretty sure you got your fair share of service for it, didn't you? Ufufufu!" she gave a very dreadful smile.

Shin gulped as a chill ran down his spine. He didn't dare say another word.

"Anyway, as I was saying. I had a hunch that you were a gas user back then, but to know Material Natura before Pure was too unlikely. But then later I saw that instead of releasing Pure Natura, an electric spark across your fingers. That was confusing, but it appears that you had the ability to use Material Natura from the very beginning. You're quite special!"

"Huh?! Then what have I been doing all this time?! You should've taught me Material much sooner then!"

"Idiot! One must never skip the basics! Thanks to my lessons, you know how to maintain your Natura for an adequate time now. Controlling Material Natura would tire you more easily than regular Pure techniques. If I left you like that, you might've ended up unable to move from depleting all your stamina!"

"Don't you think you're underestimating me?!"

"Calm down, Shin! Hannah's right, you know. She didn't teach us the basics without reason."

"He's right," said Williams, "Hannah, arguing about this is futile. You should continue to Yukio."

"Hmph! And here I was complimenting him by calling him special. He started the argument. This is why I hate men like him. They're all muscle-heads and idiots."

But then everything was interrupted with a loud bang of the door slamming open. Panting, a familiar figure stood resting his weight on his knees.

"Sorry, I'm late! What did I miss?!"

"Here comes the other idiot."

"...Idiot?"

"Nothing, just wait for your turn. Yukio, you're up."

"Y-yeah…" he followed accordingly.

"So this is supposed to tell us what powers we have?" Diavolo asked, sitting beside Shin. Not getting a reply, he further asked, "What's up with you?"

"Nothing…" and he lay down like he didn't care. Diavolo was left confused.

Touching the crystal, the fluid in the container started to bubble up and seemed like it was filling up the whole tank. Unlike Hannah's case where the smoke simply stuck to the walls, the fluid tended to push outwards in all directions. Although beginning slowly, the reaction accelerated so fast that the liquid level could not be seen anymore; to the point that a slight *crack* was heard, thus—

"Whoa, hey! That's enough, Yukio! You're gonna break it! Don't keep your hand there for so long!" Hannah panicked.

"Ah, sorry!" he retracted and took his seat.

Hannah sighed, "Next, Diavolo."

Similarly, he too put his energy covered hand on the device. And instantly, the water started evaporating, no, boiling rapidly and wasn't stopping. Several cracks appeared and—

"Wait! Wait! Stop!" yelled Hannah, and so he quickly lifted his arm away.

"Whoa, Diavolo! Looks like you're a liquid user too, huh?" (Yukio)

"Yeah, seems like it."

"No, something's definitely not right. That reaction was weird. I've never seen it react like that!"

"So now what?" (Diavolo)

"Sorry to interrupt, but doesn't that just mean that he is a really strong liquid user or something?" (Shin)

"Yeah, that must be it! After all, it's Diavolo we're talking about! You're overthinking things, Hannah."

"I...guess so… but that was still quite...unusual? Sigh, I guess I need to stop getting surprised when it comes to you three..."

"We know, right? We thought the same thing back when we first met you…" the three thought.

At that moment, nobody else realized, but William seemed to have noticed a far more odd outcome, the likes of which the four would get to know about later…

Meanwhile, somewhere far away,

"Master Hisao, we've got reports that the Fire Guardian's sister will be leaving her temporarily at the end of the month!"

"Reason?"

"I don't know. But we shouldn't miss a chance like this!"

"Idiot, it's obvious that she won't be left unguarded. She probably has someone looking after her…like a bodyguard or something."

"So what do you suggest we do, sir?"

"This is a good opportunity. Send out the new recruits! I want to test them out, as well as this 'bodyguard'. Make sure the place of assault is barely populated!"

"Understood."

And with those words, an age-long story was about to unfold.

Later that night, at the Rose household.

Diavolo lay in bed, daydreaming. He thought back to that evening and how they had decided to train Material Natura right away.

But Hannah wouldn't allow it, yet again. Apparently, Hannah simply agreed to let them know their affinities as a head start. Something like a reward for being such great students, and also after witnessing Diavolo punch down a sturdy tree.

"YOU PUNCHED DOWN A TREE?!" was what Shin and Yukio exclaimed. They too were surprised.

Hannah strictly said that no matter how fast their growth speed was, she wouldn't allow such a sudden change of pace. They must not learn it before the first exam was over.

Diavolo thus, now turned and looked at his friends. The same friends who were so adamant in delaying further, were now sleeping soundlessly fully covered enveloped by their blankets, looking like round lumps.

"As if I could just calmly sleep like this!" he thought and got up, "Sorry about this, guys. But I'll be taking a head start."

In moments, Diavolo reached the dojo. He opened the door and standing in the middle, began charging up his Natura, the usual warmups first. But—

He suddenly heard thumping noises from somewhere and so pointed his flashlight at the source, "Who's there?!" he shouted under his breath.

"It's me! It's me!" replied a familiar voice as two figures stepped out of the storage room.

Lo and behold! They were Shin and Yukio.

"What are you guys doing here?" he said as he thought back to how unusually soundless they were while sleeping.

Smiling and winking "Aren't we all thinking the same thing here?" Shin asked meaningfully.

Realizing what the current situation was, Diavolo smirked, "Ah, I guess so. Let's begin, then. Our..."

"Material Natura training!" the three spoke in unison.